What is so great about Anime?

[w00tage]

One more thing I'll chime in with on the Naruto thing:

Most everyone here has pointed out how Naruto is a great example of not-so-representative anime. And it's true - imho, although anime based on ongoing manga stories must perforce wait on the manga in order to move forward, Naruto and Bleach are both waaaayyy too drawn out simply to keep the franchise alive. 10 wasted viewer minutes per weekly episode adds up to a LOT of extra weeks of advertising and merchandising revenue

That being said, there ARE some actual good Naruto episodes, esp. towards the beginning. Although I won't now watch Naruto by choice, I WILL watch eps 48 - 50 anytime (the Rock Lee fights Gara eps) 'cause damn, that was a fun set of eps.

Not too coincidentally, of all the chars the Naruto author draws, Rock Lee is his #1 favorite

 

[BNguyen]

maybe the artist enjoys Bruce Lee
but I do disagree with most people who hate Naruto but seem to enjoy other shows or forms of media that appear the same. The basic thing that most people must realize and never actually see is that "ninja" does not always mean "assassin" - the term ninja means mercenary, thus they can be used for assassinations but tend to be soldiers or workers for hire
Naruto just happens to take place in a setting in which that form of employment is much more prominent and revered than most other lines of work since it equates to the old WWI style of thinking - heroic and triumphant, or at least that's how I view it
and each character comes from different albeit similar backgrounds and must adapt to that setting if they want to achieve their own visions of what is 'heroic' and 'triumphant'

 

[kirok]

Well first for the particular examples:
Naruto: it is not great, but is very popular and not horrible in my opinion. And like many other 30 minute animes it does not have time for plot or character development in all of its shows (many shows will simply be a big battle) but it doe make up for this during other episodes.

Code Geuess: I actually really liked this show, but you cannot just jump right in in the middle.

Anime is very diverse, and I am sure their is some you would love if you tried it, in particular some of the movies are amazing, and I have really only liked some of the less well knows series.

The problem that newcomers have is that many animes, particularly the popular ones, really seem/are [like] kid shows. I am not exactly sure what age they are targeted for but even the worst of them I have found to be more entertaining then any western kid shows.

 

[Telen]

Answer the Thread Title: That it turns out stuff like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAo7IAvgCgk

Most of anime is crap, but most of -everything- is crap so that doesn't make it much different than anything else.

 

[Estocavio]

Don't feed the troll, lads. Anime is a medium, not a genre.

Before i go on, i dont like Anime, and incidentally have never watched it.

This is kind of like Console or OS debates, only more aggressive.
Some people like the subject matter, others don't. Why people feel the need to shout at each other about it when both sides are subject to never change their opinions is the real mystery.
Anime is a subcategory of Television, in the same way that Console Gaming is a subcategory of television. Its a way of depicting moving images on a screen.
And as far as im concerned, just don't try to make me like your stuff.
On that basic condition, its no different to my neighbor liking Jazz music.
Its a matter of taste.

 

[Grey_Focks]

I like Anime mostly because all of western TV is bat shit retarded, and when it's not, it's pretty much the same thing over again. How is there so many cop shows? Seriously? Now, I love House and many other shows, but the fact that there's no full story, it's just not very memorable.

But seriously, Reality TV shows are popular. Are you telling me that the entire medium of Anime (which includes thousands of genres) is worse? The fact remains that Anime incompases so many genres that you really need to get lucky with your choice. Just because an anime is popular does not mean you'll like it. Same with any western show. Also, from the sounds of it, you either started watching those animes part way through or your not the most alert person. Code Geass gets very plot twisty, but if you've watched it from the beginning, you'll get it.

I'm not saying that Anime doesn't have it's share of repeats, but overall, Anime has a lot more depth to it. That's probably a combination of it generally having an actual story and them being around for so long.

Yea, you lost me at the part in bold. I'm just gonna say right here that generalizing of ANY type is bad, and saying that about all western TV, that's it's either retarded or samey, just shows you don't know anything about it. Since everyone else in this topic keeps posting their anime lists trying to convert us non-believers, I'm gonna do the same for TV shows.

Breaking Bad (seriously, if you only watch ONE show on this list, let it be this one. It is the best show I have ever seen, and for what it's worth, I watch A LOT of TV)
Mad Men
Sons of Anarchy
Justified
Damages
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Stargate Universe
Dexter
Community
Nip/Tuck
Robot Chicken

And those are just off the top of my head, and there really is a little bit of everything. Also, only one of those really qualifies as a "cop show" and that's Justified, but it's a pretty unique spin on an admittedly played out idea.

 

[scorch 13]

Deathnote Update IV: A New Pope (of Murder)

I love that they just blew half their animation budget on him opening up a goddamn notebook and getting ready to write. Seriously. He opens that book with the same amount of forcefulness and gravitas that Chow Yun Fat uses to kick down doors.

You know what I love about shows that deal with crime? They always have to jack up the crime rateby like 400% and turn every purse theif into John Wayne Gasey.

Jesus Christ. Light is really slow on the uptake. If I had found that I could kill people with a fucking notebook with my living room my list would look like this:

Osama bin Ladin
Kim Jong-il
Mahmoud Ahmidinijad
Vladimir Putin
Michael Moore

Death: Lighting themselves on fireall while publically recanting their hatred of America.

Light is really bad at justice.

(Reads anti-communist remarks)Well i just lost all respect for you.

 

[Gaz6231]

Fifteen pages in response to an obvious troll.

I lol'd.

 

[Naheal]

Please, keep feeding this guy.

 

[Hollock]

Well I guess it's the same reason I don't like movies. Last night I watched some of the highest grossing movies of the past years (Transformers 2, Sherk: 4 ever after, Twilight: Eclipse) and they all sucked. They sucked, therefore all movies are bad. [sub]in all seriousness, it sucks you had hang out with people whoes first words that come out of their mouths are Kawaii Desu.[/sub]

You don't like movies? I'm not even going to try and delve into why someone would write off an entire media of entertainment and education, but please answer me this. From what point of view did "popularity" mean the same as "quality" and why did you let box office intake regulate your expectations? There are incredible movies out there. You won't find any of them in american cinemas.

That was my point about anime. I watch movies...a lot

 

[TiefBlau]

What's so good about comic books?
What's so good about video games?
What's so good about movies?
What's so good about baroque music?
What's so good about hip-hop?
What's so good about Arabian architecture?
What's so good about realism?
What's so good about the color blue?
What's so good about first-person shooters?
What's so good about Chinese food?
What's so good about windows?
What's so good about postmodernism?
What's so good about chemistry?

Let's keep feeding the troll and maybe we'll find out why people's tastes are different.

 

[Xealeon]

You... actually just read.

5. Anime is more popular than Real Films, Mainly due to the population of japan compared to the rest of the world.

Population of Japan: 127 Million (information from Wolfram|Alpha at this link: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Japan)

Population of the world: 6.79 Billion (information also from Wolfram at this link: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=World+Population)

by your logic, assuming 100% of people in Japan like Anime, only 0.39% of the world likes Anime.

if you're going to say that the popularity of anime is based entirely on the population of Japan then anime must not be very popular.

for the record, I'm not really pro/con anime, I just felt I should plant some facts to this argument.

 

[Marik2]

Please, keep feeding this guy.

Will do

And the guy is suspended so he cant post on the thread, people are just adding to it

 

[Cobalt180]

If you look at the genres of the theater, you'll see that there are different types of plays, tragedies, comedies, and so forth. Anime is the same, to define anime in and of itself, it's a form of animation that does not attempt to make the characters look true-to-life, and uses Japan's history if very simplified images to convey a story. Granted, 'Naruto' has been going on for a decade now and is only now showing signs of a conclusion. But that's just how the story plays out.
To not some more popular Anime's, have you ever heard of Astro Boy? It was a 1960's anime that basically debuted the art form, and since then, variations, styles and genre's have taken to using anime as a form of simple art, perhaps somewhat introductory, to animation as a whole. To be a bit informal, it even had a recent CG movie based on it! I would hope that this represents that anime is an artform that has had it's stars and does have the potential to have cultural importance.
Anime is also a Japanese-oriented artform, so one must take into account that there will be cultural differences between Americans and the Anime's creators. I am in my college's Anime club, and some anime's I just don't get, or sometimes are a bit disquieting, but as the saying goes, "to each his own"
Most anime is never meant to be taken seriously, as any cartoon, it's simply a character that fills a role, whether you have any connection to that role is what will make you like or dislike an anime, just like a movie, just like a play, or just like theater.

 

[ajb924]

ITT:
I don't know what an opinion is.

Maybe you just don't like it. Not really my problem. Because, even if you don't like it, I do. I know a lot of it is shit, AND I MEAN A LOT, but a lot of it is good. And, sometimes the shit series are so bad their fun to watch. In the end, it's your own damn opinion.

 

[Torrasque]

15 pages of this? Wow... way too TL;DR.
Naruto is bad, Gurren Lagann is win, and Code Geass is a less douchey version of Death Note.

Like several other people have said, its all about personal preference.
There are some anime I don't like, and others I adore. Its impossible to hate all anime because there are so many different kids of anime. Its like hating books because you read a bad one.
If you do say you hate all anime, its because you hate something else besides the anime. Anime fans, japanese culture, anime art style, etc.

I personally cannot understand why people enjoy Jersey Shore, Justin Bieber, any country music, and terrible games.
But its their choice to like it, not yours.

Back to the question:
What is so good about anime?
Well, what is so good about books? Reading isn't that amazing. Art is boring right? And I can't STAND when people make an analogy to life in art form!
*throws more sarcasm at post*

 

[xdom125x]

I like that in anime people aren't afraid to swear. Also that whole developed characters, interesting plots/story arcs and the general foreign feel it has. Of course, these are only some reasons I like it.

 

[gravitii]

I would say as a person who's only seen a little anime here and there that some of it's good but it's pretty unintuitive to new comers, which is why someone like Murphy would be put off quickly going to an anime club. In my limited experience I'd say try a movie instead of a tv series since the whole story's there and you won't miss anything. Spirited Away is a common but good one.

 

[Bradax24]

I'm going to put in my word again because of all the ignorant comments I see.

Anime is just another way of presenting the film medium.

Animation is a form of film, and anime is a form of animation. Anime does not have to have skimpy girls, giant robots, or convoluted plots; those are attributes of a few anime series that have been focused on and projected to the larger masses. It's similar to the news focusing on a game with the player beating a police officer or when they focus on a mass murderer's collection of heavy metal. In other words, when someone criticizes anime for reasons other than the fact it s animation that comes from Japan, they are stereotyping the group.

Anime is capable of presenting complex stories (Death Note), with complex characters (Cowboy Bebop), and complex issues (Wolf's Rain). Giant robots (Gundam), convoluted plots (Code Geass), and skimpy girls (...Code Geass) are just part of a big melting pot.

I enjoy anime just for the same reason I enjoy Nolan, Eastwood, and Cohen Brothers movies; because I've been satisfied by their previous works; like Wolf's Rain, Cowboy Bebop, and Deathnote (even if I do have to go through a couple bad seeds).

2 things: Anime is not film, Film's a whole other thing. That's like saying painting is another form of photography. Just isn't true.
Also: Death Note blew and Cowboy Bebop was insanely difficult to get into. Face it, there are some people who are dissatisfied with where Anime is as an art. They're not irrational, they just don't share your tastes.

2 things:
1) Your comparison is fairly accurate, but you miss the point. When I say film, I mean anything that interprets a scene through moving images. Anime fits into that category. Also, a painting and a photo basically do the same thing, they show a scene through a still image; the difference between the two is how the product is made.
2) I acknowledge that people do not share the same tastes me, but I find it hard to excuse people who pick on anime stereotypes as a means of disproving anime's credibility as a type of medium. That's what point I was trying to make.

Well then you have a completely inaccurate definition of the word 'film'. Congrats.
And if you want to argue that there aren't extremely prevalent tropes throughout the medium of Anime, you're going to be fighting an uphill battle, pal. Because there are.

Sorry I can't find a word that means both movies and television. Plus, there's a difference between prevalent tropes and fact. The people I'm arguing against think that they're one in the same. I don't mean to sound like everyone else in this argument, but the same can be said in other mediums. There's a viewpoint I like to follow called Sturgeon's Law, which claims that "90% of everything is crap." This was made when science fiction was under the same debate of quality that we are expressing about anime now, "the claim (or fact) that 90% of science fiction is crap is ultimately uninformative, because science fiction conforms to the same trends of quality as all other artforms." (Sturgeon) Just like every other medium, there are small diamonds hidden within a big dull rock. The shows that this guy was exposed to, and the shows that are exposed to the masses certainly aren't diamonds.

 

[DanielDeFig]

My suggestion is to watch an anime series from the beginning to the end. Stay away from Naruto and One Piece, these kind of Animes (100+ episodes) make money by dragging out the original manga source for as long as they can (I love the One Piece Manga, don't care for the Naruto Manga). I Suggest Soul Eater and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, they don't include any of that "what it is to be a man" / "friendship gives power"/"determination solves all your problems" crap that is very common in Manga n Anime (these are the parts where i don't really read/listen to what's being said, cuz it's all the same).

But both Brotherhood and Soul Eater have 50+ episodes, which might be a bit much to sit through in order to get a complete Anime experience. There are an endless amount of smaller Animes that last for only 24-26 episodes. I suggest Solty Rei: it's not as hyperactive as some other Animes (good for newcomers), it's more low-key overall but it will still introduce you to some of Anime's weird humor and unique style. Otherwise you could try Hellsing, or Mahou Sensei Negima: 24-26 episodes Animes, that aren't as great as their Manga sources, but definitely effective intros to delve deeper into the series.

Other than that i'm afraid i can't think of too much off the top of my head: Eureka Seven is a great Anime with a very different art style (50 Episodes), and Fairy Tail is so far the best Anime adaptation of a Manga series iv'e seen (50+ Episodes so far).

Check out some Anime Movies as well. Hayo Miyazaki is the main director you should be looking at. Watch Spirited Away (Academy-Award winning movie) in japanese with english subtitles (it's what you'll be doing with anime, it's the ultimate Anime movie that shows that Anime is an artistic media on the same level as live-action film.